Beijing Smog

by Ian Williams

  Midway between Hong Kong and Macau, the ferry entered a dead zone, where the phone signal from neither place was strong enough to register on his iPhone. The ferry slowed, an announcement saying there were speed limits because of the bad visibility. Morgan looked out at the grey nothingness, as the ferry crawled on for another forty minutes before cutting its engines and cruising into a terminal beside Macau’s airport on Taipa, an island off the main peninsula of the former Portuguese colony.

  The Superclass passengers, a dozen at most, were the first to get off the ferry. Casino earnings may have been down, but the lower deck was packed and they seemed to Morgan to be lining up for a race to the Baccarat tables.

  A bored-looking immigration official barely looked at his passport, and he was quickly out of the terminal and into the middle of a frenzy of touts and guides. Groups of young women in shiny gold mini-skirts pointed the way to colourful shuttle buses bound for the casinos.

  He boarded a green bus for the Cotai Strip.

  It was almost two in the afternoon, and he texted both numbers: Mr Fang’s sidekick and the one that Ching had used. “Arrived and heading to Cotai.”

  A message came back quickly from the Fang phone. “Mr Fang will be there at 4.” And he texted the Ching phone again saying that was the time he’d be dining. There was no reply from that phone.

  It took fifteen minutes to reach the Cotai Strip, a series of massive gambling complexes. Tall, sprawling hotels built around cavernous casinos.

  He left the bus, passed through a revolving doorway and into a reception area lit by enormous sparkling chandeliers. He had time to kill, so headed down a wide corridor lined with luxury brand shops, past an indoor forest and a fountain that changed colour from a deep blue to a violent red. The corridors formed a vast perimeter around a casino that never closed, its constant murmur and pings punctuated periodically by the ecstatic roar of a winner.

  Morgan was almost knocked over by one tall heavily made-up young Chinese woman as she came out of a shop, laden down with shopping bags bearing designer labels, four in each hand. Prada, Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton were the ones he noticed.

  She struggled trying to press a button for a lift, so Morgan pressed it for her. He smiled slightly. She ignored him. She was wearing a bright red skirt so tight that she appeared to waddle into the lift.

  If Macau was falling on hard times, nobody had told her.

  It had been a while since he’d been in Macau, but it was popular with a lot of his clients.

  Ten minutes before four he entered the Cha Chaan Teng restaurant, which was largely deserted, it being well after its lunchtime peak, and gave Fang’s name to the woman at a desk near the door. She took him to a semi-private alcove at the back of the restaurant where he sat and ordered a glass of red wine.

  He continued reading the newspaper from the ferry as four o’clock arrived. Then four fifteen. Four thirty. Four forty-five. He messaged the number for Mr Fang’s assistant, and when he didn’t receive a reply he tried ringing the number. It was unobtainable. Power off.

  At five o’clock, a tall Chinese woman in tight purple silk cheongsam entered the alcove and said that she had messages for him, and would he like tea. He said yes, and asked for a jasmine green tea. The woman left the table, returning five minutes later with the tea and one cup, which she filled.

  She said he had two messages.

  “Mr Fang sends his apologies, but he can no longer meet you.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Morgan, feeling a strange sense of relief, sipping the tea.

  “And the other message?”

  She gave him a small red decorative envelope, with the characters for ‘good fortune’ on the front. Inside was a playing card, an ace of spades. There was tiny writing just above the spade on the front of the card, which he recognised as Ching’s writing. It said, “Fisherman’s Wharf”, and then the name of a Thai restaurant. There was also a small drawing.

  It was a stick alien.

  “Anything else?” said Morgan to the woman, who was still standing near the table.

  “Mr Ching wants you to text when you arrive,” she said, refilling his cup.

  Morgan placed the playing card in the inside pocket of his jacket along with his iPhone, then left the restaurant, passing a group of gamblers posing for photographs in front of a sculpture of four large silver polar bears near the casino entrance. A woman with a green painted face handed him a leaflet advertising “Breakfast with Shrek”. He waved her away, and headed towards a taxi, pulling his bag behind him.

  The taxi took him across a long low bridge connecting Taipa Island with the Macau peninsula. The casino lights were coming on now – purples, blues, whites and yellows, reflected in the water.

  He’d heard about Fisherman’s Wharf, knew some of the investors. It was a waterside development of shops and bars, a bizarre mishmash of styles from Rome to Tibet, with a good number of places in-between.

  The taxi dropped him next to the Fisherman’s Wharf version of the Roman Colosseum, which sat in the shadow of another Casino, dominating the waterfront.

  A craft market was in full swing, as was a children’s grand prix, toddlers guiding small electric-powered racing cars around a short track. Morgan was now pulling his wheeled luggage in a more haphazard fashion than the young racers were driving their cars, and almost collided with one who’d strayed from the track, drawing angry looks from half a dozen racing mothers.

  A warm day was turning into a cool evening, a light breeze blowing from the bay. But Morgan removed his jacket and placed it over his arm. His blue buttoned-down shirt was by now soaked with perspiration. He was feeling dizzy.

  He reached the waterfront beside the Thai restaurant. He sat on a wooden bench close to the water’s edge, leaning on the long arm of his wheeled bag, and texted the Ching number saying he’d arrived.

  Then he fell off the bench; a server from the restaurant helped him up, asking if he was okay, saying she’d get him water.

  He felt lousy. He looked again at the Twitter message from his wife, and then at the playing card, staring at it, before putting it and his phone back in the pocket of his jacket, which fell to the floor. He was struck with a sudden and overwhelming feeling of panic.

  He pulled himself awkwardly to his feet and began to run, tripping again and then colliding with a barrier near the waterfront. He managed to avoid falling over it, but the force of the impact sent his bag hurtling over the edge and into the water.

  He kept going, not looking back. His vision was fuzzy and he struggled to see ahead of him. He felt like a huge weight was crushing him, forcing him toward the ground. But he willed himself on, weaving, staggering as fast as he could, desperate to get away from that area and to the one place he knew he would be safe.

  – 32 –

  The Harbin Express

  Wang Chu’s detention ended after five days, almost as abruptly as it had started, when a uniformed police officer came to his cell and told him to sign a confession and what he called “certain undertakings”.

  The officer was carrying a thick wad of bound papers, which included a transcript of his interrogation, which said he had admitted to inciting subversion, as well as spreading malicious rumours and malicious hyping online, but was being released pending further investigation.

  Wang said he still didn’t understand. The officer said he didn’t need to. The man seemed to know little about the case, and care even less. He opened the confession at the back page, where there was a place for Wang’s signature, just below a paragraph saying he had fully read and understood everything. He signed the document.

  Then the officer produced another document, which he called a guarantee, and which said Wang must follow police instructions and not discuss politics online. It specifically barred him from any online activity that depicted aliens or other abnorm
al live forms. He signed that one too.

  Then the officer returned his phone, shoes, belt and watch before placing the hood back over his head and leading him down the stairs and across the icy path to a vehicle that felt smaller than the one they’d arrested him with. The engine spluttered to life after three attempts, the driver swearing about the cold, and half an hour later they dropped him at the railway crossing close to The Moment On Time. Though after they removed the hood it took a while for him to see where he was, as his eyes adjusted to the sudden harsh light.

  He took a deep breath, then coughed. The smog was still bad, but the grey silhouette of the coffee shop was a welcome sight; only when he arrived he found the door was sealed, and there was a pasted hand-written note saying it was closed until further notice. Two police vans were parked just along the street.

  He couldn’t make any calls because the battery on his phone was dead, so he walked back to his room. His roommates weren’t there, but on his bed was a note, which he thought might be from them. Instead it was an official letter from the University saying he had been expelled for gross breaches of discipline and disregard for regulations.

  He found a portable battery charger in a drawer that was usually full of hard drives and other computer stuff, mostly related to their online shop. The drives had all gone. He plugged the charger into his phone and then ran to the University, thinking that if he could explain himself to his supervisor, Mrs Jiang, he might yet salvage his place.

  When he reached the office to which he’d earlier been invited to tea, he found the same elderly woman, wearing another poncho-type woollen top, though this one was brown. She was making tea.

  “I’d really like to see Mrs Jiang,” he said, breathless. “It’s an emergency.”

  “Mrs who?” said the woman.

  “Mrs Jiang. My supervisor. You’ll recall I was here for tea just the other day.”

  But the woman said she couldn’t recall Wang being there, or a Mrs Jiang for that matter, and continued with her tea-making ritual without looking up.

  Wang noticed that the door into the main office was open. He took a step towards it and saw the same big desk on one side, the crumpled sofas around the stained coffee table, and the old poster for an academic conference on the wall. But behind Mrs Jiang’s desk there now sat a wiry man with small round glasses.

  “You’ll need an appointment to see Mr Zhou,” said the woman in the poncho.

  Wang moved closer to the door and hesitated, trying to catch the attention of the man called Zhou, who was looking down at his desk. He took another step, right to the door and was about to knock, when the woman in the poncho pushed past him carrying the tea into the main office and closed the door in Wang’s face.

  Wang left the building, heading back towards his room. There was now some life in his phone’s battery, so he tried to call Liu and Zhang, but neither picked up.

  When he got back to his room he lay on his bed and fell asleep, finally overcome with exhaustion built up over his five-day detention. But he was woken up well before dawn when a pile of noodle boxes fell to the floor. They were still overflowing from the sink, but had become unstable from the growing colony of cockroaches.

  He was soon wide awake again, and the more he thought about it the more puzzled he became about why he’d been released. Perhaps they’d believed him, that the alien thing was just a joke. Perhaps his father had helped, making calls on his behalf.

  The thought of his parents filled him with guilt. How would he tell them about the expulsion? They had huge hopes for their only child and he was sure they’d be angry and heartbroken. He checked the messages on his smartphone. There was a bunch from Zhang and Liu, trying to figure out where he was. There were also several from his father. Brief, but with an urgency he wasn’t used to hearing, asking him to ring home.

  Did they already know? The police had threatened to make life hard for his family. He’d thought they were bluffing, but now he wasn’t sure. Though it was early, he tried ringing his mother and father, but both went straight to voicemail. He didn’t leave a message. Didn’t know what to say.

  Unable to sleep anymore, he gathered some warm clothes and took a taxi across the city to Beijing South railway station, a vast and cavernous terminus on the other side of town that served as a gateway for high-speed trains.

  When he reached the station it had only just opened. He had never seen it so quiet and empty. He and his bag were scanned at the entrance, and he flinched as a uniformed security official patted him down. He bought a second-class ticket to Harbin, on the eight o’clock train; he then went to find something to eat, with nearly two hours to kill.

  The oval-shaped building was so big that the smog hung inside, and he looked down the concourse at the fuzzy neon of fast-food outlets opening for business. He found a noodle shop, which served him a steaming bowl of something with only a passing resemblance to the picture he’d pointed to when ordering.

  He held his chopsticks in his right hand, scooping noodles, while with his left he worked his smartphone, opening a game which put him in the saddle of a horse, galloping across a land of snow-peaked mountains and dark valleys, zapping the monsters that appeared all around him.

  He didn’t notice the two men who entered the noodle shop, ordered tea and took a table near the door, where they sat watching him.

  When Wang left, still working his phone and having reached a level higher on his game thanks to a bloodied trail of dead and dismembered monsters, they left too, following him across a station now quickly filling with people, and when he boarded the train they boarded too, taking seats a few rows behind him.

  The train to Harbin was packed. It always was. Wang had a window seat. A woman with an overweight toddler sat next to him. And as the train slowly pulled out of the station, the toddler stood on its mother’s knee, where it bounced, kicked, coughed and screamed for most of the first hour of the eight-hour journey.

  When Wang opened the game on his phone, the toddler took a lunge for it. The mother apologised half-heartedly, but did little to stop it. Wang put the phone away and was soon in another deep sleep, in spite of the best efforts of the barrel-like child.

  When he woke, hours later, the toddler was asleep.

  He again tried ringing his parents, but there was still no response. He listened again to his father’s voicemails. They were short, hurried and anxious. Which was unusual. His father usually left long rambling messages, so long they were often cut off when he reached the voicemail limit, only for him to phone again and pick up where he left off.

  His father often said he was able to have a much better conversation with his voicemail than with his son in person. Wang thought he was joking.

  He needed to use the bathroom, but leaving his seat required an almost acrobatic skill to avoid waking the toddler and its mother, who was now also asleep. He clipped the toddler with his shoe while making the final vault to the narrow aisle beyond. The toddler yelped but didn’t wake up.

  The aisle was an obstacle course of bags and cases. It was then he saw the two men, big men with closely cropped hair, almost comically squeezed together in seats that looked way too small for them. And he saw the scar on the head of the one by the aisle, a long pink scar that stretched from beyond his hairline and down to just above his right eye. Wang quickly looked away and was shivering by the time he reached the bathroom, where he stood, leaning against the door, trying to calm himself. It was the way they’d looked at him, hostile and knowing. Yet they didn’t look like police, not like the ones who’d detained him in Beijing.

  He returned to his seat, avoiding eye contact with the men, while trying to convince himself he was being stupid and paranoid. He ordered some dried fish and a bottle of water from an attendant.

  There was now a sprinkling of snow on the passing fields. Irrigation canals were frozen. The snow got thicke
r as they approached Harbin. The tall cooling towers of power stations and factories grew more numerous, belched huge white plumes of smoke and steam, welcoming Wang back home. At times the smog here could be worse than in Beijing.

  But it was the cold that mostly put Wang off Harbin. He hated the cold. A digital thermometer at the front of the carriage showed the outside temperature at minus twenty-three degrees centigrade and falling.

  As the train came to a standstill, Wang sat and waited, thinking he’d let the train clear first. He didn’t reach immediately for his bag or coat in the rack above. When he looked back the two men had put on their own thick coats. The one with the scar was wearing an orange padded jacket and black ski hat. The other, a black woollen coat and a woollen hat with earflaps. They were waiting too.

  Wang now moved quickly, snatching his things, and headed down the aisle. The men followed.

  The platform was a crush of people, funnelled down a series of stairs and escalators to the main station concourse and exits below. The crowd swept Wang along, and he could hear the shouts and complaints from behind as his pursuers, big and ungainly, bulldozed their way after him.

  When Wang reached the top of an escalator he abruptly changed course, taking the stairs that ran alongside. The men were carried by the human tide onto the escalator, and for a while moved parallel to Wang, watching him.

  Halfway down Wang turned and began to climb back to the top. It was hard going, but there was more room on the stairs. The men tried to turn too, but were trapped on the narrow escalator. They yelled and pushed, but there was nowhere to go but down.

  Back at the top, Wang waited. He figured his pursuers would expect him to use a different exit, so after ten minutes went back down the same way. There was no sign of them.

  He crossed the station concourse to a long taxi line. He still couldn’t see the men. So he raised his collar and headed to the front of the line, waving as he got closer, as if there was somebody there he knew. At the front he told an elderly couple that he was sorry, it was urgent, that he needed to get quickly to see his sick mother. The couple shrugged and let him take their taxi.